In The Contemporary Subject of “Africa for Africans,” (Opinion)

By Joe

Africanist folks are wont to throw in everything they’ve got in thoughts and views, including the kitchen sink. The result is a potpourri of related and unrelated ideas like mixing up white, mulatto and albino babies in the maternity ward. The thread by which the fabric of most proponent arguments are woven is the fantasy that Africa should not have been invaded by foreigners or having been, should somehow revert back to the way it was when Cleopatra was still a randy pharaoh in Egypt. And that is the Achilles’ of most proposition on African cosa nostra.

It is the weak link because it is frivolous to expect that Africa would revert back to 3000 years ago undisturbed and even more so audacious to stake a whole scholarship on it. It’s not gonna happen, people. Nor would Africa have been left unvisited by neighbor races co-inhabiting the planet earth with her. That is not the way of nature. Nothing stays the same forever, not evolution, not man civilization, and certainly not any language or culture.

As devastating as the effect of Arab/European invasion of Africa still is with us, it is reversible. The problem is many Africanist intellectuals believe this can only be achieved by undoing the history of Africa and rolling the continent back to a time when there was no Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Somalia, Eritrea or South Africa. But I doubt if this is the only horse we must seek before moving the cart of Africa forward. Rather, we can reverse the ubiquitous misery in Africa by developing a new trait in response to our current natural threats and dangers on our continent. After all, not even evolution remains stagnant. There is need to mutate out the traits of foolishness and stupidity in us where the lazy and crazy among us no longer control the hardworking and sane, and where the dimwitted and fraudulent minority Africans no longer lord it over the intelligent and honorable African majority. This trait should be carried by both the followed and follower Africans and expressed in both of our genotype and phenotype make-ups. The traits need not be present in our germ plasm from antiquity, we can achieve them as acquired traits. At any rate, there are currently dire environmental challenges for us to develop them under duress.

The new trait will help us deregulate the perpetual relevance that the 300-year old Arab/European incursions in Africa continue to have on our affairs. It will change our status quo in misfortune as we know it today. It will generate new Africans that will not tolerate sit-tight president-for-life monkeys as our leaders in Africa, incompetent leadership, profligate and rudderless government, mediocre self-interest policies, any act of looting , system corruption or lack of sense of urgency for progress in Africa. When more honorable and competent folks rise to take charge across Africa, Africa will perk up and begin to inch forward in real and measurable progress. Then perhaps the logic of pan-Africanism may prove more sensible and appealing and become a reality.

I personally recognize religion as one of the mixed-up issues in Africana talks.

When religion is thrown in the way you have articulated above, it comes across as if all religions are man-made. Man-made religions are hollow ideas and would ordinarily not sway many strongly held opinions, not to talk of wipe out cultures. However, it is my opinion that religions that are based on attempts to worship a Superior Force that is the Giver or life and death and to Whom all creation would return, as divine even with all the imperfections of such religions. The interrelationship between one divine religion and another is much more complex than the one involving non-divine man-made religions.

Two divine religions understand each others’ language because the Supreme Energy is at the core of their beliefs. Where one is proclaiming and talking upgrade in message the other understands and yields because the ultimate desire is to achieve the Good Face of the same Lord. This cross-over movement has happened all through the ages and will continue to do so. People of Adam upgraded their belief through the era of Noah to Abrahamic message when it came. People of Abraham equally upgraded their beliefs through eras of so many prophets to eras of Moses (Old testament) and Jesus (new testament). Yet, when Muhammed showed up 600 years later, millions crossed over from the message of Jesus into Islam.

The Christian missionaries and Arab slavers might have used their means and opportunities to bastardize the African idol worshipping religions and convert Africans into Christianity and Islam, respectively. This is only one half of the reality at the time. The other half is in the divine basis of most of the African religions which actually recognized the existence of a central God but through lesser idol gods. The cross-over of Africans into Christianity and Islam wasn’t simply a product of manipulation as many Africanists are wont to argue. When divine religions talk to each other, they listen to each other. They identified the core truth in the message they hear from each other and acknowledged evidence of more illuminating light in the newer gospels that one is telling the other. It is akin to how an invading Arab/European would acknowledge the suzerainty of a local African kingdom but still end up impressing the local king with the conferred importance in owning a mirror, better crown, gun powder or compare the taste of schnapps with ogogoro.

Upgrade carries its own proof. When something is upgrade to what you have, you will know and want to have it if you can. It is the same with divine religions.

Africans are not the only people who lost their age-old religions to Christianity and Islam.

Ever since the fantastic story of Jesus was told, Christianity permanently changed the world, ruled the world and continues to do so till today. From traditional Europe to Arabia (before Muhammad (SAW)), Japan, Korea, Indochina, India and Africa, Christianity tore away hundreds of cultures and age-old religions. Similarly, ever since the message in Al Quran was read out to other civilizations, Islam decimated hundreds of age-old cultures and traditional religions. Islam took roots in China with only a message on a horse.

Islam took a big slice out of India’s Hinduism population, another adherents of a multi-god religion. Russia and China tried to kill Islam and Christianity but ultimately succumbed to the advance of time and modernity. Today, Indonesia has the largest Muslim population at about 200 million and at least a quarter of  China’s 1.2 billion population are Muslims at full strength.

Despite the popularity of the claim, it is hard to prove that an African Christian/Muslim today dislikes the African traditional religion because the European/Arab told him/her so.

This claim has assumed the power of a slogan with Africanists and Africanist wannabes alike. It’s just plain silly for anyone to imagine that an African born-again Christian prefers swearing by the Bible to swearing in front of the ogun god because he has been brainwashed by the European missionary. Religion is personal and much more sublime than that. Africans are not the only people who lost out their culture to Europeans and Arabs! Reverting all Africans back to animist beliefs will not change a squat in how much self-pride we carry or interracial respect we receive from the global community. The challenge to any form of idol worshiping religion is in its archaic nature.

It would ultimately become old fashioned under the sheer pressure of human civilization alone. Even if Arabs and European missionaries did not come to Africa, Africa’s animist religion would still have lost out to population explosion, creation of modern cities and mass migration to them from the villages, modern education, modern jobs and modern lifestyles, tools of modernity such as good homes, cars, air travels, modern medicine, etcheteram, etcheteram. African citizen Ali Mazrui is a respected African and African intellectual, but he is a strong Muslim. How did he handle his supposed Arab indoctrination and European colonial mentality? Such nonsense. Everyone (including the irredentist Africanists) can verify with themselves and determine which they would rather be comfortable doing – worshipping secretly in some forest oftentimes in the dark of night or behind closed doors, or worshipping openly in the church or mosque.

Then after deciding which one, ask yourself, could you have been brainwashed into your preference.  

Get real, people. Africa is not altogether helpless in her ongoing deplorable predicament.

Despite the past European/Arab incursions and the present incursion by the Chinese, Africa can still turn itself around. When more honorable and competent folks rise to take charge across Africa, Africa will perk up and begin to inch forward in real and measurable progress.

Peace.

(culled from yahoogroup discussion)

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Response:

This is an interesting and on-going debate. The issues are complex and require careful thought lines:

1.  You wrote this excellent piece of yours in English (you have excluded many who live in Africa but are formally schooled (often to the exclusion of their mother tongues) in English.  Unless we translate this to the many different languages of schooling and mother tongues in Africa, your thoughts are of limited impact (however sound or wise).

2.  Before Arab and European invasions did the peoples of Africa see themselves as Africans?  Maybe we saw ourselves then along village, Clan, Town or Linguistic lines ONLY.  So the concept of an Africa as a unit of geographic consequence is useless to us pre-invasions.

3.  Therefore Kemm is of no significance to a Yoruba who lives in Ilaro, Yewa Egbado in south west Nigeria or a Shona in Zimbabwe.

4.  The world view that the invasions (Arab and European) moulded will not disappear and will not be wished away.

5.  The Arab and Berber conflict you described can also happen between two Yorubas from Modakeke and Ile-Ife so the sources of conflict may not be solely due to differences in racial origin.

6.  I support the training, teaching of African languages and African studies such that more can be known and preserved about what we were before the invasions, what the invasions did to us and why we are what we are today because of the invasions.

7.  I have more points on this but I wish to end by asking whether the effect of the invasions is irreversible.  Look at the case of religious beliefs in Africa toda and the embrace of the religions of the invaders and the demonization of our traditional African beliefs.  Many of African descent even consider pre-invasions beliefs and practices as primitive and evil while embracing the religions of the invaders with glee forgetting that they also evolved just like ours too was evolving before they came to truncate its evolution.

Many deep seams and streams of thought can be mined, and will flow from your rather interesting propositions.

Cheers.

IBK